Читать книгу The Hired Man - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 14

Chapter Six

“You ever think you’d like to eat pie for breakfast?” Cord asked the next morning.

“Yes!” Molly and Daniel shouted in unison.

“No,” Eleanor said decisively.

Cord shrugged and watched her crack eggs into the skillet. “Apple pie is not a proper breakfast for growing children,” she pronounced in a no-nonsense tone.

“Aw, Ma,” Danny moaned. “I’m sick of eggs.”

“Eggs,” their mother said with an edge in her voice, “are what civilized people eat for breakfast.”

Both children dawdled through the meal of fried eggs and bacon, and suddenly Cord realized why they were eating so slowly. It was Monday, a school day for Danny.

An hour later the grumbling boy hoisted his satchel over his shoulder and plodded out the front door. Molly moped around the yard petting the chickens until her brother trudged back through the gate late that afternoon.

“Danny, you know maybe you could ride my bay mare to school,” Cord remarked casually. “I could teach you to ride.”

“Nah. Ma won’t let me. You heard her. She says a horse is dangerous. Besides, you said it was too much horse for me.”

“It is dangerous if you don’t know how to handle a horse. You ever been on a horse?”

Danny shook his head.

“How long does it take you to walk to school?”

“Most of an hour. It’s over three miles.”

Cord nodded. He’d like to see the boy get to and from school faster, if only because Molly was always underfoot when her brother was gone. An extra hour morning and evening could be well spent if Danny was around to entertain the girl.

After supper that night Cord again raised the subject with Eleanor.

“Absolutely not,” she said shortly. “He’s too young to manage a big animal like that.”

“He’s not too young, Eleanor. I told you I learned to ride when I was younger than Molly.”

“Then your mother was a fool.”

“My mother was dead. My father was the fool, but he taught me to ride anyway. And hunt and read and write. He even taught me to dance a Virginia reel.”

Eleanor’s face changed. “Did he really? How extraordinary!”

“He also taught me how to repair a barn roof, which is what I’m going to do tomorrow. Unless,” he added, “you have something else that needs doing.”

“Does the barn roof really need fixing?”

“It does. The holes are so big, at night I can look up and see the stars. Come winter it’ll leak like a sieve.”

“I take it that you are sleeping up in the loft?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Along with Mama Cat and her kittens.”

“I think Isaiah slept in one of the horse stalls. He wouldn’t climb the ladder up to the loft. He said it made him light-headed.”

Cord chuckled. “Then he never knew about the holes in the roof, did he? Or about Mama Cat?”

“Oh, very well,” she said with a laugh. “Fix the barn roof. I certainly wouldn’t want a wet cat and kittens when the winter rains come.”

She stood up, untied her apron and hung it on the hook by the stove. “Thank you for making those pies, Cord.” She hesitated. “A man who can not only bake a pie and dance a Virginia reel but repair barn roofs is certainly rare in my book.”

Cord thought about her remark all the rest of that day. Rare, huh? He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but “rare” wasn’t one of them. Still, he thought with a smile, a man liked a compliment now and then, didn’t he?

* * *

It was Saturday, Danny’s School Night. All day the boy moped around the yard with such a long face Eleanor wondered if he was sick. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and set aside the basket of green peas she was shelling and stood up on the back porch step. “Danny, are you feeling all right?”

“Sure, Ma. I guess so. Got something flutterin’ around in my belly is all.”

Cord looked up from the chicken house, where he was nailing a new roost in place. “Butterflies, huh?”

“Guess so,” the boy muttered.

“You have to give a speech or something? That can make a man plenty nervous.”

Danny perked up at the word man and sent her hired man a pained look. “Yeah. I gotta recite the Bill of Rights from memory and give a speech about it.”

“Hey, just yesterday you wanted to be ‘all growed up’ so your ma would let you ride a horse,” Cord reminded him. “Part of gettin’ there—” he shot Eleanor a look “—is, uh, standing up to those things that are hard.”

“Like giving a speech?” Danny muttered.

“Yeah, like giving a speech.”

Eleanor sat back down on the step and again started shelling peas. Cord made a good deal of sense at times.

And then her hired man opened his mouth and spoiled it. “Believe me,” Cord called from the chicken house, “you’re gonna find ridin’ a horse easy after makin’ a speech in public.”

Her son’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cord said.

“No,” Eleanor countered. “No horse-riding. Not yet.”

Cord pounded another nail into the chicken roost, tossed the hammer to Danny and strode across the yard toward her. But instead of starting an argument with her, he asked about her daughter. “Where’s Molly?”

“She’s in the barn, playing with those kittens.”

“She’s not near the horse stalls, is she? Or up in the loft?”

“She is not allowed up in the loft, Cord. I don’t want her falling off that narrow little ladder. And she’s scared to death of horses.”

“But you trust her, right? She’s sensible enough not to get hurt.”

“Well, yes. But...”

“Ma,” Danny called, his voice plaintive. “Do I really have to go to School Night?”

“Yes,” both she and Cord said together. “You really do. Now, go find Molly and both of you wash up for supper.”

Thankfully, Cord kept his mouth shut about horses and riding all through her supper of creamed peas on biscuits. When she shooed the children upstairs to put on clean clothes, Cord went out to the barn to hitch up the wagon.

Upstairs in her bedroom, Eleanor quickly sponged off her face and neck and donned her blue gingham day dress. She was the last to descend the front porch steps.

She felt as nervous as Danny. All her life she had disliked public gatherings. Her mother had criticized her for being shy, but Eleanor knew better. She was not just shy; she was frightened of people, especially crowds of people. Somehow she felt she never “measured up,” in her mother’s words.

Cord took one look at her, jumped down from the driver’s seat and lifted her onto the wagon bench beside him. Before he picked up the reins he leaned sideways and spoke near her ear.

“You all right, Eleanor? You look white as milk.”

“I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Just a little scared.”

“Scared about what?”

She twisted her hands in her lap and looked everywhere but at him, but she didn’t answer. Finally he laid down the reins and turned to face her. “Scared about what?”

“About all those people,” she admitted. “About... I guess I’m worried about Danny. It’s so hard to be on display.”

“Yeah.” He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Instead he picked up the traces and they started off.

Danny clambered down to shut the gate behind them, then climbed back into the back. He looked so preoccupied Cord had to chuckle. Probably rehearsing his speech in his head.

The schoolhouse was lit up like a Christmas tree with kerosene lamps and candle sconces along the walls. Children milled about in the schoolyard, and as Cord maneuvered the wagon into an available space he heard Danny let out a groan.

“I don’t wanna do this!” he moaned.

“I don’t want to do this, either!” Eleanor murmured.

Molly stood up in the wagon, propped her hands at the waist of her starched pinafore, and at the top of her voice screeched, “Well, I do! I do wanna do this!”

All the way into the schoolhouse Cord chuckled about Fearless Molly in a family of Nervous Nellies. Danny disappeared into the cloakroom, and he followed Eleanor to an uncomfortable-looking wooden bench near the back. He lifted Molly onto his lap, careful not to squash the ruffles on her clean pinafore, and then looked around.

He recognized Carl Ness, the mercantile owner, with a thin-faced woman he took to be Carl’s wife, flanked by two young girls. He recognized Edith, the girl who had painted the mercantile front pink; the other girl looked exactly like her so that must be Edith’s twin sister.

Ike Bruhn, the owner of the sawmill, sat with two women, one with a baby in her arms and the other tying a bow on a young girl’s braids. Then a very beautiful young woman with a bun of dark hair caught at her neck with a ribbon stepped to the front of the room and clapped her hands.

That must be Danny’s teacher. At the clapped signal, a humming sound began at the door behind him, and all at once he heard singing.

Twenty or so students, ranging in age from about six or seven to a strapping blond boy of maybe fourteen, marched in two by two, singing “My Country ’tis of Thee.” A chill went up Cord’s spine.

Danny was the seventh in the line, walking next to a small blonde girl in a pink gingham dress. The boy looked like he wanted to sink through the floor.

The teacher, Mrs. Christina Panovsky, arranged them in rows against the front wall and turned to the audience. “Welcome, everyone. This is an extraordinary class of extraordinary young people—your sons and daughters. We want to share with you what we have been learning this school year.”

What followed was impressive. Four students acted out a scene from a play about Robin Hood they had written themselves. Then a small choir sang “Comin’ Through the Rye” in three-part harmony and a larger choir presented a “spoken word” song, a clever recitation of geographical names chanted in complicated rhythms. “Ar-gen-tin-a. Smoke Riv-er. Clacka-mas Coun-ty. Mex-i-co Ci-ty.”

Molly loved it; she bounced up and down on his lap in time with the words.

Finally Danny stepped forward to deliver his speech.

Molly sat up straight and craned her neck to see. Eleanor clutched Cord’s arm. He felt a tightening in his chest.

“Ladies and gentlemen...” The boy’s voice shook slightly, but as he progressed through his speech it grew stronger, and when he finished with, “We are one people, one nation... We are Americans,” his words rang with assurance. He stepped back to spirited applause.

Eleanor still clutched his arm, and now she was crying. Cord pried her fingers off his bicep and pressed his handkerchief into her hand.

“Th-thank you,” she wept.

It made him chuckle deep down inside. Molly twisted around and flung her small arms about his neck. “Wasn’t Danny wunnerful? I wanna go to school, too!”

Following Danny’s speech there were more songs and recitations, ending with the little blonde girl in the pink dress, who sang a haunting folk song, first in French and then in English. Something about yellow daisies in a meadow.

“That’s Manette Nicolet,” Eleanor whispered. “Her mother is French, from New Orleans. Her father is Colonel Wash Halliday, over there.” She tipped her head to the right, where a small, very attractive woman sat holding the hand of a well-muscled gent with a bushy gray-peppered mustache. His eyes were so shiny Cord could see the moisture from here.

“Colonel, huh?” he murmured. “Blue or gray?”

“Blue, I think. Union. His full name is George Washington Halliday. It’s her second marriage. Her first husband was killed in the War.”

“The daughter, Manette, doesn’t look much older than Molly. Looks like she does well in, uh, school.”

Eleanor let the remark lie.

When the presentations and recitations drew to a close, Mrs. Panovsky invited them all to stay for cookies and lemonade.

“Oh, boy, lemonade!” Molly sang. She scooted off Cord’s lap and bobbed excitedly at her mother’s side until Eleanor rose and moved toward the refreshment table in the far corner. Cord was about to follow when a feminine voice called his name.

“Why, Cordell Winterman, is that really you?” A ruffle-bedecked Fanny Moreland made a beeline across the room toward him. “Y’all remember me, don’t you? Carl Ness introduced us at the mercantile? You were buying coffee and lemon drops and—”

“Chicken mash,” Eleanor said from beside him.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Malloy. I haven’t seen you in town for such a long time I thought you might be...well...you know, expecting. Are you?”

“Expecting what?” Eleanor inquired with a perfectly straight face.

“Um...well, you know,” Fanny said, lowering her voice. “Expecting a...baby.” She whispered the last word.

“I am not, thank you,” Eleanor replied, her voice cool. “My husband, you may recall, has been away for some years.”

Fanny looked nonplussed for just an instant. “Oh, that’s right, I remember now. Why, you’re practically a widow!”

Molly reached up and gave Fanny’s flounced skirt a sharp tug. “That’s not very nice! My mama is not a widow.”

Cord lifted Molly into his arms and started to move away, but Fanny wasn’t finished yet.

“Oh, Cordell, I am so terribly thirsty. Would you be so kind as to fetch me some lemonade?”

Cord gave her a level look. “Sorry, Miss Moreland. As you can see, I have my hands full.” He shifted Molly’s weight to emphasize his point.

“Why, who is this darling little girl?” Fanny gushed. “Surely you are not the father? You’re not married, are you, Cordell?”

“No, he’s not!” Molly blurted out. “I’m Molly, and he’s not married. He lives with us!”

Fanny’s expression changed. “Oh, you mean with Mrs. Malloy?”

Molly nodded. “Yes, with my mama.”

Cord cleared his throat. “I work for Mrs. Malloy. I’m her hired man.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting! I was just about to pay a call on Mrs.—”

“No, you weren’t,” Cord interjected.

“Well, why ever not? I only want to extend a friendly gesture.”

“You want a helluva lot more than that, Miss Moreland. And I’m not interested.”

The smile on the young woman’s face never wavered. “Oh, come now. I’m sure you don’t really mean that, do you, Cordell?”

Molly squirmed. “Oh, yes he does!” she shouted.

Cord could have kissed her. He spotted Danny across the room. “Excuse us, Miss Moreland.”

He met the boy halfway across the room. “Didja see me, Cord? Was I all right?”

Cord dipped to extend his hand to Danny without dislodging Molly. “You were very all right, Dan. Congratulations.”

He took the boy’s small hand in his and gave him a firm, manly handshake. Danny grinned up at him and Cord thought the boy was going to float up off the floor.

After cups of watery lemonade and too many chocolate cookies, Cord herded his little entourage out the door and across the schoolyard to their waiting wagon. He tightened the cinch on the gray horse, lifted Molly into the back and watched Danny climb in beside her. Then he walked around to the other side, where Eleanor stood.

He didn’t even ask, just slipped both hands around her waist and lifted her onto the wooden seat. She said nothing until he drove out of the schoolyard and started on the road out of town.